EMPOWERED story notes, pt.5 (Patreon)

More Empowered story notes from very early on in the series. And now, some quick annotations. 

Left-hand column:

*The karaoke bit appeared quite directly in vol. 3, save that I had to swap out "Girls and Boys" for a sing that wouldn't need quoted lyrics (and, hence, legal approval).

*The "voice-mail affirmation" bit refers to the long-ago occasion that I did cover artwork for a CD, and received a very kind voicemail about the work on a friend's answering machine, as I was "couch-surfing" at said friend's apartment back then. The response was some of the very best and most positive feedback I ever got for my art, yet I didn't quite have the nerve and/or chutzpah to save the voicemail recording. 

In retrospect, this seemed like a very Emp kind of thing to do, and thus I planned to work the incident into the series. Alas, that window has passed, as current-day Emp has more than enough nerve and/or chutzpah to save a similarly affecting message, regardless of what her teammates might think. (Could be a flashback to a nervous, cringing Early Emp, though.)

Note, by the way, that I will someday post the CD's artwork here. The long-defunct band's name was Miss Red Flowers and, to be honest, my artwork was probably completely inappropriate for the tone of the actual music. Still, the art looked pretty nice! And the band's logo was designed by God-among-letterers Tom frickin' Orzechowski, even!

*The "body issues" bit was used in an Empowered vol.1 story. 

*The seemingly cryptic bit in the "midnight freakout" paragraph about "French 1 letter pronunciation" is another personal reference. See, in back in high school, I missed the one g-d day in French class that the teacher went over how individual letters were pronounced, so students could spell out words en Francais. Spent the rest of my time in French class one step behind due to missing that crucial day, alas. (Independent study would've helped, obvsly, but that was a lot trickier in the pre-internet era.)

*The "continued" bit at the bottom of the left-hand column (and not the right) might seem puzzling, save for the fact that I always scribble the right-hand column of text first. Odd but true!

Right-hand column:

*The first Willy Pete incident listed wouldn't appear until vol. 4. The second idea might've been interesting, and arguably funny in a gruesome way; the idea of a very serious, straightforward, monologue-intensive supervillain team-up being disrupted by Willy Pete just killing everyone else assembled would've been an even more pronounced version of "SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS!!!!" than what I wound up doing.

*And, yeahp, Ninjette's "never being good enough" riff appeared in vol. 2.

*I'm saddened that I never got around to using "Polearmaster" in the series. However, given the booming popularity of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons nowadays, he might well appear in an upcoming volume—though Gary Gygax's obsessive love of obscure polearms is familiar only to AD&D first-edition players like myself, I suppose. (No idea why he gave 'em such crappy stats, though; 1e's heavy sword bias apparently overpowered ol' Gary's love for the Bohemian earspoon, Lucern hammer, guisarme-voulge, and all their fellow long-ass weapons.)

QUERY: I'll be doing a "state of the Patreon" post sometime this week to talk about what I'm posting here, but thought I might as well ask now: Are these story notes something that you kind Patreons are getting very much out of? I sure hope so, as I have endless g-d reams of such notes not just from Empowered but also from Dirty Pair, Gen13, and pretty much every other project I've worked on in the modern (post-2000) era.